The role of trust in influencing customer willingness to help fellow customers with online-only retailers’ self-services : a mediated model

Abstract

Trust in an online retail context remains an important research topic in management, considering its impact on uncertainty reduction and purchase intentions. There is however, little scientific understanding of the extent to which trust towards online-only retailers may contribute to customer willingness to help fellow customers with online-only retailers' self-services. Insight is important seeing that online-only retailers are unable to rely on physical store presence as a form of assurance to gain credibility and attract new customers. Prospective customers receiving help with self-services from existing users trusting the retailer may be of valuable assistance in this regard. Consequently, the current study aimed to verify the impact of trust towards online-only retailers on customer willingness to help fellow customers with online-only retailers' self-services. The influence of perceived ease of use and usefulness of self-services on trust was also studied. An electronic survey was completed by 311 customers of online-only retailers. The structural model analysis validated the proposed relationships and identified trust as a strong mediating variable. The research findings advance the understanding of strategies online-only retailers could employ to promote helping behaviour among customers. Theoretically, a novel perspective is provided on relationship marketing factors contributing to customer citizenship helping behaviours.